The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose.

Though the view should be as vast as the sky, keep your conduct as fine as barley flour.

Each moment of noting is a moment of purification, a moment of cultivating the path.

The difference between buddhas and sentient beings is that buddhas recognize their nature while sentient beings fail to recognize it.

Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness.

The mind itself is the maker of all happiness and misery; yet beings do not understand this and blame external conditions.

If you want to know the past, look at the present. If you want to know the future, look at the present.

Face your own anger and you will be free from anger. Face your own fears and you will be free from fear.

When you note pain, you are not trying to make it go away. You are trying to understand its true nature.

In the moment of pure noting, there is no self - only the knowing and the known.

Generosity generates its own enthusiasm. We don't have to force ourselves to be generous; we just need to start.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

When mindfulness becomes continuous, the distinction between the observer and the observed begins to break down.

Both formerly and now, it is only suffering that I describe, and the cessation of suffering.

Appearances are mind, mind itself is emptiness, emptiness itself is spontaneous presence.

Those who know emptiness, know impermanence. Those who know impermanence, know non-self. Those who know non-self, know peace.

The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.

External phenomena are like a dream, whatever appears is not real. Recognize the nature of dream-like phenomena to be dream-like.

The ocean does not reject any water; therefore it is great. The mountain does not select its stones; therefore it is great.

True happiness is not about getting rid of all our problems, but about changing our relationship to them.

The real purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.

Be a lamp unto yourself. Work out your liberation with diligence.

The path of practice moves from faith through understanding to direct realization.

Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.

The essence of Buddhist practice is to bring everything onto the path. Every experience becomes an opportunity for awakening.

Wisdom and compassion must be developed equally and harmoniously.

We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.

Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what's happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening.

The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.

The goal of meditation is not to achieve a blank mind, but to gain insight into the nature of mind itself.